


here it comes, the first day

by noiselesspatientspider



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Lee Jordan/George Weasley, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, probably? war fucks you up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiselesspatientspider/pseuds/noiselesspatientspider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry doesn't feel like a golden boy. Hell, he can't even make it through a barbecue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here it comes, the first day

It’s a warm Saturday in June, and there's a million people crammed into Ron and Hermione’s backyard– all the surviving members of the DA they could scrounge up, and half the Weasley clan, and even some of the Order. Ron is flipping steaks with his wand, and Hermione keeps trying to get him to let her take a turn because "it can't be that hard, honestly, it's just meat." Charlie, back from Romania for a few weeks, is pressed up against the side of the grill like he missed the smell of burning.

It’s a beautiful day, and everyone is lovely, and they all keep _smiling_ at him. Harry thinks maybe he's allergic to charcoal smoke. His chest feels tight.

"Harry, m'boy!" Harry looks over to see Ludo Bagman parting the crowd, a slightly unsteady beer hovering in front of him like a herald. Of all the people that should have made it through the war unscathed, _Ludo Bagman_ , really.

Ron must have heard Ludo’s booming voice, because he looks over from his steaks and mouths an apology. Harry shrugs it off. It’s just Bagman; he’s a slimy git, and Harry trusts him about as far as the back door, but he’s mostly harmless.

Mostly-harmless Ludo Bagman is clapping him on the back. "What are you up to these days, golden boy? Heard talk about you becoming an Auror. We going to see you around the Ministry one of these days?"

Five minutes into Auror training, the instructor Apparated in with a crack and Harry's magic flew up in a brilliant golden shield that knocked the Head of Magical Law Enforcement on his back and burnt out the inside of a conference room. He remembers rising from his crouch, wand terribly steady, expecting to see half a dozen Death Eaters. Katie Bell had emerged from the smoke instead, and Harry had spent thirty seconds trying to remember how to break someone out of Imperius before realizing where he was. Her eyebrows had been burnt off in the explosion, which made her look about as unhinged as Harry felt.

"I'm taking some time to figure things out," Harry says, his smile tight.

"Well, don't take too long!" Bagman chuckles. "Soon you'll be too old to be an Auror at all, and you'll have to come down to level seven with me!"

Harry looks past him to where George and Lee are sitting on the back stoop. Lee’s hand rests on the back of George’s neck, and he’s murmuring something into George's hair. George looks like he's being shot, slowly, and is trying not to show any sign of it. The tendons in his neck pop out like wandstrings.

Ludo Bagman is alive, prattling on about Quidditch, and Fred Weasley is dead, and George looks like _this_. And Harry is at a barbecue with him, not somewhere doing something useful, because his magic thinks he's under attack all the time. The grill is belching puffs of smoke, and he really can't breathe. He’s definitely allergic.

"Excuse me," he says to Bagman. "I need to go check on something."

He’s been inside Ron and Hermione’s house plenty of times for dinners and Christmas. It’s a very nice house, full of worn chairs and piles of books. The wallpaper is hideous; Hermione had read about eight books on interior decorating, and then Ron had gone to B&Q, become utterly bewildered by automatic faucets, and paid for the first pattern he saw, bulging with enormous, misshapen orange flowers. He’d tried to cover up his mistake by charming it to something less eye-watering and only succeeded in making the pattern wobble alarmingly whenever anyone walks past. Normally Harry finds it endearing, but today the movement makes his wand hand itch and his stomach curdle. It’s just wallpaper, for Chrissake, he thinks furiously.

“Go on,” one of the wooden knights from Ron’s chess set says, sagely. “There’s no shame in a strategic retreat.”

“Shut up,” Harry snaps, marching through the hallway and out the front door.

Ron and Hermione live a fair ways away from town, and the field across from their house blends into a small wood. Harry isn't the biggest fan of forests, but this one is warm and the trees grow straight and slender. He finds a rock to sit on and sinks down, putting his head between his knees and trying to breathe in four, hold four, out four, hold four, like the Muggle Hermione made him see had shown him.

It's sort of working, but somewhere in the process he finds himself crying, which isn't what he'd call progress. Fuck this. Fuck his stupid brain and his stupid feelings and his stupid magic. Fuck the Muggle doctor and his "whatever you've experienced, it wasn't your fault," and sitting there helpless with rage because it was, actually, entirely his fault, but he couldn't explain how, in his fifth year, guilt settled in his shoulders like the heavy murmur of the invisibility cloak and never left. He couldn't tell a Muggle doctor that if he'd just gone to die a few hours earlier than he had, hundreds of people– children– would still be alive. (Around that point in the session, he’d noticed the potted plant in the corner starting to vibrate, mumbled an excuse, and fled.) Harry is so tired of running away.

A branch cracks. Someone's here in the woods with him. Every muscle in his body coils up, and he has to unclench his arm so he can slide his hand across the rock towards his wand. Harry can hear whoever it is breathing. He waits three, four seconds, exhales smoothly, and then twists up and around, jabbing his wand into someone’s throat.

Luna blinks back at him.

He almost flings the wand away in his haste to disarm himself. It hits the base of the rock with a soft clatter. "Sorry, Luna, oh Merlin, so sorry. I’m a little." He huffs. “On edge.”

"I thought you might like to talk to someone." She tilts her head to the side, appraising. "I might have guessed wrong, though, you'll have to let me know," she continues.

Harry exhales, a brief little snort. "That's alright, you don't need to trouble yourself.” He tries to shove his shoulders down from the vicinity of his ears. 

"It's not trouble," she says. "I wouldn't offer if it were." She pauses. “No, that’s not right. I probably would, but you should trust me not to take on more than I can handle.”

Harry's fingers twitch for his wand. His hand feels empty, here in an uneasy truce in the woods. Luna is your friend, he reminds himself. This isn't a fight. "I moved out of Ginny's," he says finally, moving over to sink onto the rock.

"I'm sorry," says Luna, "unless it was the right thing to do, in which case I'm happy for you both."

"It was the right thing to do," Harry says, thinking of dishes rattling in the cupboards and Ginny with her hands up and her "Harry, you're scaring me."

"Towards the end, things got– it wasn't safe. But I'm not sure 'happy' is the word I'd use." Ginny had offered to stay, even with the dishes, but he'd refused. It wasn't her job to fix him. "I just feel a bit useless," he continues, sneaking a glance up at Luna to gauge her reaction. "I don't know why, there's plenty of things I should be doing, and I don't– I can't–" He breaks off, frustrated. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't bother you with all this."

"Harry," Luna says, exasperation creeping in the edges of her voice, "I offered. It's alright."

He looks down at his hands. "I don't have a purpose. I keep wanting to fight, and there's nothing to fight. I spent my whole life fighting, and it turned out the best thing I ever did was die." Oh god, it really is all coming out now.

Luna makes a soft, distressed sound. "You know that's not true, right? Even if you feel like you need to rank the things you've done– you've done a lot. You came back."

"I almost didn't," he says, softly. "Ron and Hermione don't know, but I could have gone on. I had a choice. I wanted to go on."

"You didn't, though."

"But I wanted to. I came back to fight, I think. Because you all might have needed me." Does it still count as suicide if someone else kills you? he thinks, but he can't say it.

"It's alright if there isn't a battle anymore, Harry," she says, laying her hand on his shoulder. "It's alright if all you do is go home and water the dirigible plums."

He shakes his head blindly. There's something bright and woolen climbing up his throat.

"It's alright," she repeats. "You don't have to be everything anymore. You just have to be Harry."

"Harry Potter isn't– isn't me," he says, and god, how selfish, how unimaginably stuck-up, to peel off the gold on his skin because he doesn't want it? Who wouldn't want it?

Luna makes another little noise, and her hand tenses on his shoulder.

He scrubs at his face. "I know," he says, and it comes out muffled, "I just need to get back into my life and I'll find it's perfect and everything I've ever wanted and–"

"That isn't what I was going to say, actually. I was going to say it's alright. You don't have to be him, if you don't want."

Harry's laugh bites at his throat. "How am I supposed to do that?" he asks. He has to Apparate nearly everywhere he goes. Reporters are rabid dogs and should all be put down. 

"Rent a cottage, live like a Muggle, travel. You're a brilliant wizard, you can avoid the Daily Prophet. Easy." She hesitates, and he can feel the tension in her hand. "Come travel with me, if you want," she continues. "Not forever, and not if you can't keep up, but I'm in the mood for company, at least for a bit. You can help me catch Snorkacks."

Harry's breath flies out of him like an escaping bird. "That sounds lovely," he tells her.

"You said you didn’t feel like Harry. Is there something else you'd rather I called you?" Luna asks.

"I don't– I don't know," he says, his laugh stuttering out of him on surprised, trembling legs. "I never thought– Harry Potter is my name, you know?"

She nods, smiling a little.

"My parents gave it to me," he adds, looking down at his hands.

"I'll help you find one, if you want," she says, with the calm assurance he has always so admired. "But you don't have to decide now."

"Yes," he replies. He's not entirely sure what he's saying yes to, but it seems like the right thing to say.

"Move over, please," she says, and he does, so she can sit next to him on the rock. They are there for a long time, watching the light filter wetly through the trees. Luna waves the occasional hand around their heads. "Wrackspurts," she says, to his raised eyebrows.

Harry focuses on the way his heart beats, and how his lungs feel when they fill with air, and how the moss smells. It's alright, he thinks, testing the words out. Or– no, that’s not quite it. It's not alright, but it could be. It could be.

**Author's Note:**

> More sad stories about sad people!!! :DDDD 
> 
> I mostly just wanted to write the conversation between Harry and Luna instead of my final paper, and the rest of it sort of happened.
> 
> Title taken from "In Our Bedroom After the War," the ultimate post-Second Wizarding War song
> 
> Recent Google searches include "do british people have barbecues," "did british people say ok in the 90s," and "the uk home depot" so if there's anything egregious, well, I tried. More importantly, I haven't been through a war, so I'm basing Harry's reactions on my own experiences with anxiety and some basic research. If there's anything egregious (or not-egregious) I'd love to hear about it so I can do better. 
> 
> Leave me a note here, or message me at shipyrds on tumblr.


End file.
